1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a novel and improved lock for sliding doors. The lock has inside and outside rotary handles for unlocking the lock, hook-shaped rotary latch bolts which extend from opposite sides of its housing for selectively engaging spaced strikes to selectively retain a sliding door in closed or open positions, a slidably movable latch-operator for selectively unlocking and locking the outside handle to enable and disable it from rotating the bolts, and a latch-operator override mechanism which moves the latch-operator to its unlocked position when the inside handle is operated at a time when the latch-operator is in its locked position. More particularly, the present invention relates to improvements in locks of the type described which result in the provision of a very compact, nested arrangement of operating components that move relative to each other by rotating about a common axis, and which cooperate to provide a rugged, tamper-resistant assembly.
2. Prior Art
A handle-operated door lock having inside and outside handles, and having a latch-operator which is movable to selectively lock and unlock the outside handle is described in the referenced Detent System Patent. The lock described in the referenced Detent System Patent does not have a latch-operator override feature; accordingly, when it is necessary to unlock the lock described in the referenced patent, the latch-operator must be moved out of its locked position before either of the inside or outside handles can be moved to unlock the lock.
While locks having inside handle latch-operator-override capabilities are known, previous lock proposals incorporating such features are not applicable to sliding door locks which have independently-operable, hook-shaped latch bolts that are arranged to pivot about a common axis together with interior and exterior handles and operating tumblers, wherein each of the bolts may be selectively operated by either of the handles.